What To Expect Next From BitTorrent Sync

A year and a half ago, BitTorrent Sync started with a simple idea: give people the ability to sync large files fast by skipping the cloud. We’ve been humbled by the enthusiastic reception during the Alpha and Beta phases, and we’re now getting ready to take the Beta tag off and introduce a premium edition of Sync to the market. Before that happens, we want to keep you informed on what to expect next.
The capabilities of Sync have allowed it to be used in many, and very different, ways. From distributing files across remote servers to sharing vacation photos, Sync has shined for many users (you don’t see that from the cloud). As we evolve the technology and the product, it has become apparent that to satisfy the needs of Sync’s most popular use cases, different products are required. These most popular use cases are:

Syncing files between your devices and sharing them with others.

Replicating files across devices controlled in an IT environment.

Sending large files to another person.

Let me talk you through the evolution of Sync and the three products we are working on within the Sync family:

Sync 2.0 – Sync and Share

We’re continuing to invest more and more into Sync and there’s a lot of great features coming in Sync 2.0. We’re improving the free edition over what’s available in version 1.4 and we’re introducing new functionality that will be a part of a new Pro edition.

Intended for individuals needing to sync and share a lot of data and those participating in collaborative professional workgroups, Sync Pro provides additional functionality necessary to help you get the job done. Capabilities like having access to very large folders, controlling ownership and permissions for shared folders, and keeping information automatically consistent across your desktop and mobile devices will now be possible.

Access Folder Contents On-Demand

Control Folder Permissions and Ownership

We’ll soon make available an Alpha build of Sync 2.0, so those of you who want to check out the new functionality can help us test some of the new features and provide feedback. We’ll post another note on our blog when it’s available and it will also show up on our community forum. For those who are interested in getting the latest updates, scroll down and you’ll a blue sign up button.

Since Sync’s distributed technology bypasses the cloud, it means we do not have to invest in building big data centers to hold tons of servers and storage. This allows us to deliver a Pro version of Sync that’s very competitive on price. It’s one of a set of factors that distinguishes Sync from what you get with the public cloud:

If you’re interested in being notified when Sync 2.0 is available and getting updates on being a community tester, visit the link below to sign up and we’ll keep you posted.

File Replication

One of the primary uses of Sync today is for it to move files across devices that you control. Many of these scenarios are in IT environments where administrators are doing things like replicating files between devices on a private network or rolling out new websites to front-end servers. In order to give IT admins a powerful solution to deploy, manage, monitor, and scale Sync operations, this optimized product is being built. For example, we’ve already increased Sync’s scalability in our lab to 1000 devices, with some full synchronization events finishing in less than one minute.

The Sync-based file replication product will not be available until some time after Sync 2.0 has launched, but visit here to be kept up-to-date on major developments. Until then, please continue to use current versions of Sync and keep providing very valuable feedback.

Mobile Large File Send

There’s plenty of ways today to send a handful of photos from one device to another, but getting videos or large collections of photos from one mobile device to another is not so easy. And if you have to do that from an iPhone to an Android device…good luck. AirDrop is nice if you’re sending between iPhones, but we live in multi-platform world and apps need to just work without constraints.

For those of you that used Sync 1.2 on a mobile device, you may remember the mobile-to-mobile feature. We’re taking that functionality, enhancing it, and bringing it back in its own app. Since this app uses the Sync engine, it not only efficiently moves files directly from device to device, but it also works on all mobile platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows Phone).

If you’d like to be alerted when this new app is available, click here to sign up.

Thank You

On behalf of the entire Sync team, we want to say thank you to the Sync community. Sync has been widely adopted and you’re showing us every day there’s a need for a strong alternative to the public cloud.

We will continue to provide you major milestone updates when available and we welcome feedback on the blog and on our community forum.